Seeking bāuls of Bengal
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Seeking bāuls of Bengal
(University of Cambridge Oriental publications, 60)
Cambridge University Press, 2002
Available at 5 libraries
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Note
Bibliography: p. 262-279
Includes indexes
Description and Table of Contents
Description
'Bauls' have achieved fame as wandering minstrels and mystics in India and Bangladesh. They are recruited from both Hindu and Muslim communities and are renowned for their beautiful and often enigmatic songs. Despite their iconic status as representatives of the spiritual East, and although they have been the subject of a number of studies, systematic research with Bauls themselves has been neglected. Jeanne Openshaw's book is fresh, not only in analysing the rise of the Bauls to their present revered status, but in the depth of its ethnographic research and its reference to the lives of composers and singers as a context for their songs. The author uses her fieldwork, and oral and manuscript materials, to lead the reader from the conventional historical and textual approaches towards a world defined by people called 'Baul', where the human body and love are primary and where women may be extolled above men.
Table of Contents
- Part I. Background: Literature on 'Bauls' and 'Baul-songs': 1. 'What's in a name?' The advent of 'the Baul'
- 2. The making of 'the Bauls': histories, themes, 'Baul-songs
- Part II. In Search of 'Bauls': 3. Fieldwork in Rarh
- 4. Fieldwork in Bagri
- Part III. Received Classifications: 5. Two shores, two refuges: householder and renouncer
- 6. Evading the two shores: the guru
- Part IV. Reworking the Classifications: 7. Affect: love and women
- 8. Theory: images the 'I' and bartaman
- Part V. Practice and Talking about Practice: 9. Practice (sadhana)
- 10. Four moons practice and talking about practice (hari-katha)
- Conclusion.
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